Rackspace Private Cloud Case Study: JC Global Resources de Mexico

A Broad Portfolio in the Rackspace® Private Cloud

JC Global offers IT management and software solutions to Latin American businesses.

CUSTOMER’S BUSINESS:Based in Mexico City, JC Global Resources de Mexico is an IT management company serving medium to enterprise-level businesses in Mexico, Puerto Rico and Venezuela.

CHALLENGES:Many of JC Global's customers are subject to regulations that disallow the storage of data across international borders. JC Global's portfolio is also constantly expanding, so scalability is a must.

RACKSPACE SOLUTION:Rackspace Private Cloud

BUSINESS OUTCOME:Rackspace Private Cloud provides a secure environment for JC Global’s customers and allows them to scale as they grow.

Based in Mexico City, JC Global Resources de Mexico is an IT management company serving medium to enterprise-level businesses in Mexico, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. The company offers a broad portfolio of services to its customers, including testing and automation, an open source SaaS offering for medium businesses in need of an affordable ERP, and a forthcoming product that delivers Rackspace Private Cloud with HP management tools for enterprise-level customers.

Because many of JC Global's customers are subject to regulations that disallow the storage of data across international borders, an on-premise cloud was a natural choice. Rackspace Private Cloud has allowed JC Global to harness the power of OpenStack without spending the money or time recruiting the team of private cloud experts such a project would require. They see Rackspace support as the differentiator that will bring wider OpenStack adoption among Latin American enterprises.

Simple to deploy

When JC Global decided to build a private cloud in their data center, they looked into several OpenStack distributions. "We tried Ubuntu MAAS and StackOps, but Rackspace Alamo was the best and simplest solution for us," says JC Global owner Juan Manuel Caceres.

"Rackspace Private Cloud has a feature that nobody has right now - it's easy," Caceres says. "MAAS from Ubuntu was too complex for us. For starters, they need eight servers. If I grow a lot, maybe I'll need that, but I prefer to start small. As I grow, I may migrate, but not right now." Rackspace Private Cloud powered by OpenStack means that JC Global is free from vendor lock-in and able to reevaluate their systems as their business evolves.

However, Rackspace's responsiveness may keep JC Global loyal. "Before I came to Rackspace, when I spoke with MAAS, I requested a quote for support," Caceres recalls. "It was more than six days, and no one gave me an answer. When I did the same thing with Rackspace, I had my quote the next day."

Instant head count

Rackspace Private Cloud has allowed JC Global to reallocate budget that would have otherwise been spent on OpenStack configuration specialists. "Rackspace solves a problem for us," says Caceres. "I don't need to hire an OpenStack expert team, which I'd planned to do in the beginning. I'd planned to have 10 or 15 people with deep knowledge of how to configure OpenStack, but after I started to work with Rackspace, I said, 'I don't need to hire those people.'" Asked whether finding those people would have been easy, Caceres laughs. "No, definitely not!" he says. "It would have taken six, seven months."

On install, Alamo gives you an OpenStack cloud configured according to the recommendations of Rackspace specialists for OpenStack. These recommendations are based on the deep expertise in OpenStack Rackspace has developed as a cofounder of the platform. That means that Caceres can focus on how to best use OpenStack rather than worrying about architecture. Caceres says, "I'm hiring more people for development with Swift," OpenStack's scalable object storage. "Instead of configuration people, I now have developers and people who know how to interact with OpenStack. For our configuration problems, we look to Rackspace."

Suitable for SMB and enterprise customers

JC Global initially used Rackspace Private Cloud to provide its customers with testing and development environments. Seven months ago, they added Spirit Market to their portfolio, an offering where medium businesses access and get support for a variety of open source applications. Caceres explains, "In our Private Cloud, we have images of OpenERP, OrangeHRM, Sugar CRM, Jaspersoft Community Edition and Elgg for social networking. When a medium business needs an ERP, but doesn't have enough money for SAP, they can use Spirit Market for a monthly charge, including support. Private Cloud allows me to bring these applications to customers whose data can't leave the country."

Next, they're launching Spirit Cloud, a service for enterprises that offers HP management tools with Rackspace Private Cloud. For Caceres, the ability to offer Rackspace support on top of OpenStack has been a major differentiator that's piqued his enterprise customers' interest. Caceres says, "We created a product in HTML5 and embedded the Rackspace portal features into HP BSM-a business service monitoring application that gives you a 360 view of all of your applications and your business services. For managed OpenStack, customers won't have to move out of HP BSM, they'll just have an additional tab in which we embedded the Rackspace Private Cloud management portal. You can provide images, you can provide instances, you can work with volume assignation and things like that. When the customers see that they can combine the HP management capabilities they're already using with Private Cloud support from Rackspace, they're very enthusiastic."

Caceres is also enthusiastic. "Rackspace services are working very well for us right now," he says. "The support response time is very good, and we're feeling great right now. We're going to grow, and we're planning to do so with Rackspace."